Finding Your Tribe: Why Neurodivergent Community Matters.

As a newly diagnosed AuDHD woman going through the journey of perimenopause, one thing I learned very quickly: look for like-minded people, find your tribe!

Why?

When you're going through the process of later life diagnosis, you start a journey that sees your life slowly unravel before your eyes.

You revisit, retrace and relive memory after memory, experience after experience. It is lonely, heartbreaking, rage-evoking - you go through so many stages. Just when you think you've come through the worst of it, another memory or experience pops up.

After this happens countless times, you start to understand what loneliness is. It's what you felt all of your life trying to fit into the neurotypical world, but now, in the moment, with the knowledge you have, you realize WHY you felt lonely.

It wasn't actually you.

It was the world you were trying to operate out of - it wasn't designed or set up for you. So the loneliness makes sense.

Then you realise: who are my people? Where do I put myself? Why do I need to find people? A multitude of questions that are naturally asked of oneself post-diagnosis.

In integrating your new identity as a neurodivergent person, one thing remains the same, and it is so with all humans, even neurodivergent ones - we need people.

Even when our neurodiversity struggles with social interaction, we are seeking genuine connections in all of our interactions. We cannot deny this.

So finding a group of people that you can be a part of, on your terms, is vital in providing us with an anchor point. Where we can truly be free from neuronormative expectations. Where we can stim freely, have our sensory accommodations met without apology, and experience a sense of authentic connection and knowing with your own tribe.

For healing, we need each other.

It starts with us, but eventually we need to connect with our people to build our neurodivergent community.